Unruly Travelling Rants, thoughts, ideas, concerns, and other things from the world over. Central Europe right now.

A Bit of Change

So right now ObamaCo is looking into the executive orders put into place by President Bush in such things as stem cell research, oil drilling, and other things. I don’t know exactly what they are looking for, or scrutinizing, but it seems to me they are questioning the legality of these orders, and whether or not they should be repealed.

Here is the definition of executive orders:

n. a President’s or Governor’s declaration which has the force of law, usually based on existing statutory powers, and requiring no action by the Congress or state legislature.

Okay, so to me this means that the President can circumvent Congress and essentially pass his own laws without Congressional debate or oversight. Thses things did not come into existence under BushCo Jr, in fact they have been around since 1789, but I think that it would generally be agreed that Chimpy has been the one President who used this privilege the most.

I call it a privilege because there is no Constitutional mandate that grants executive order powers to the President. There is an implication that the Pres has the ability to issue such orders that govern the executive branch, but I think that it is a basttardization of the Constitution and the freedom on which this country was founded and stands to allow such edicts to go beyond the executive branch.

They can be dangerous to the American people. After all, it was an executive order issues by FDR theat sent Japanese Americans, German Americans, and Italian Americans to internment (basicalyy concentration camps without the gassing and genocide) camps because they were seen as a potential threat due to their nation of origin. This was not passed by the Congress, or even put before them. It simply came into effect because FDR made it happen with a few strokes of his pen.

Presidents should not be allowed to make laws that bypass Congress. It is not the job of the President to make laws, if it were, that office would be called the legislative branch. But it isn’t. It is the executive branch because it is there to make executive decisions, like signing a bill or amendment so that it becomes a law, or to deny such a document by the power of veto.

The thought that Obama is reviewing these orders, and possibly considering repealing them, makes me smile. It give me confidence that he is going to attempt to bring forth some positive changes in the way this country is run.

Also, I would like him to tackle the issue of signing statements, which are another way the Office of the President has of affecting law. Or in BuschCo’s case, ignoring the law. What good is a law anyway, if it does not have to be followed by everyone. Again, signing statements existed before Chimpy came to power, but he took their use to a whole new level, and set a precedent fot the president that basically allows the executive branch of the government to follow only the laws they feel like following. Again this is against the spirit of democracy upon which we are founded.

There is a long road ahead of all of us to undo the damage BushCo did during his eight years as Dictator in Chief, and it will not be easy. This current action by Obama, though, is promising in that it has the potential to restore some power to the American people where it belongs. We cannot, however, depend on him (or any other elected official for that matter) to give us our power back. We must fight for it and make it clear that we will no longer tolerate how things were done before. Obama was elected for one of two reasons:

He’s black (I have to say this, it’s a bit of a joke, because so many people are complaining that he was only elected because he’s black).

That he would bring positive and meaningful change to our nation that would restore us as a people and a nation to ourselves and the rest of the world.

It is this second reason that I voted for him (his race was a bonus, but not really a consideration for me) and I am not going to let him off the hook just because the election is over and I can breathe a little easier now. But, I am not going to unjustly attack him either.

He is not President yet, he is just President elect, I know that. I also know that change takes time. As Randall Flagg would say: “Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor Akron Ohio, for that matter,” so when change does not come immediately I am not going to get up in arms, but I will be waiting, watching and writing, and if things take too long to change then I will be considering who I will vote for, and his/her name will most likely not be Obama.

Indeed, but at least we’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that they know what we have felt for the past 8 years. However, we have to be careful not to revel in it too much cause if we let Obama get away with the types of things Bush did without raising a stink, then we too could be considered hypocrites cause it’s our guy doing it. Still, it won’t hurt to let him get away with a little, just not too much.